Singapore gallery mounts Yayoi Kusama retrospective on a suitably grand scale
National Gallery Singapore has the space to show the most monumental of works by Japanese artist, whose instantly recognisable art is an expression of the neurosis she’s suffered since childhood
National Gallery Singapore is about to launch an immersive retrospective of Yayoi Kusama’s dotty idiosyncrasy, surrendering its austere surrounds to the Japanese artist’s psychedelic, all-enveloping vision.
Kusama’s first major exhibition in Southeast Asia opens on June 9 and it will feature more than 120 works, including her instantly recognisable “infinity net” paintings, her mirror rooms and soft, phallic sculptures.
The former City Hall building has the luxury of space in which to show her work at its most monumental scale. Dots Obsession (2017) is a collection of huge, yellow eggs with black dots suspended in the middle of the glass-ceilinged UOB City Hall Courtyard.
Narcissus Garden (2017) is a collection of 1,500 large stainless steel balls scattered all over the floor of the City Hall Chamber like loose ball-bearings. This is a re-enactment of her bolshy 1966 guerilla act at the Venice Biennale, when she asked visitors to take home the balls for a small sum as a protest against the elitist nature of contemporary art.
The show’s title, “Life is the Heart of a Rainbow”, is taken from the name of one of her new oil paintings, a series called “My Eternal Soul” which has familiar motifs but also new forms and colours.